HCS 550 Pluralistic and Elitist perspectives

Elitism

Elitist such as C. Wright Mills in the USA saw the political system as secretly and unfairly dominated by small numbers of wealthy and influential groups such as members of the military industrial complex (that is, those in the military responsible for procuring expensive weapons systems and the companies that provided them). In Britain critics used to talk of the Establishment in a similar way, a network of individuals connected through public schools and Oxbridge who ran the heights of politics, the civil service and industry in the interests of their own class. Both these analyses are left-wing and can take on a Marxist form where the economic class, capitalists, are seen as controlling the political system in its own interests.

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